🗽⚖️ PROVING OUR POINT, AGAIN: “Sir Jeffrey” & I Have Been Ripping The Garland BIA’s Contrived “Any Reason To Deny” Misinterpretations Of Nexus & PSG — 1st Cir. Is Latest To Agree With Us! — Espinoza-Ochoa v. Garland

Kangaroos
Turning this group loose on asylum seekers is an act of gross legal, judicial, and political malpractice by the Biden Administration and Merrick Garland!
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Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community: 

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/21-1431P-01A.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/big-psg-and-nexus-victory-at-ca1—espinoza-ochoa-v-garland

“Here, the IJ and BIA found, and the government does not dispute, that Espinoza-Ochoa credibly testified that he experienced harm and threats of harm in Guatemala that “constitute[d] persecution.” But the agency concluded that Espinoza-Ochoa was still ineligible for asylum for two reasons. First, it held that Espinoza-Ochoa had failed to identify a valid PSG because the social group he delineated, “land-owning farmer, who was persecuted for simply holding [the] position of farmer and owning a farm, by both the police and gangs in concert,” was impermissibly circular. Second, the IJ and BIA each held that, regardless of whether his asserted PSG was valid, the harm Espinoza-Ochoa experienced was “generalized criminal activity” and therefore was not on account of his social group. We conclude that the BIA committed legal error in both its PSG and nexus analyses. We first explain why Espinoza-Ochoa’s PSG was not circular and then evaluate whether his PSG was “at least one central reason” for the harm he suffered. Ultimately, we remand to the agency to reconsider both issues consistent with this opinion. … For all these reasons, we agree with Espinoza-Ochoa that legal error infected both the PSG and nexus analyses below. Accordingly, we GRANT the petition, VACATE the decision below, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats way off to Randy Olen!]

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You’ve been reading about this damaging, deadly legal travesty going on during Garland’s watch:

🌲UNDER YOUR TREE:  A GIFT 🎁 FROM “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE OF THE ROUND TABLE 🛡️— “Asylum In The Time Of M-R-M-S-“ — “One reaction to this decision would have involved explaining that the Board’s illogical holding was reached not by error but by design, in furtherance of a restrictionist agenda; asking why the current administration hasn’t changed the makeup of a BIA specifically constructed to do exactly that . . . . But such talk would be of no practical help. What those representing asylum applicants and those in government deciding those claims need now is a path to negotiate this latest obstacle and still reach the correct result.”

🤯 MISFIRES: MORE MIXED MOTIVE MISTAKES BY BIA — “Expert” Tribunal Continues Underperforming In Life Or Death Asylum Cases! — Sebastian-Sebastian v. Garland (6th Cir.) — Biden Administration’s “Solution” To Systemic Undergranting Of Asylum & Resulting EOIR Backlogs: Throw Victims Of “Unduly Restrictive Adjudication” Under The Bus! 🚌🤮

How outrageous, illegal, and “anti-historical” are the Garland BIA’s antics? The classic example of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary persecutions involve targeting property owners, particularly landowners. Indeed, in an earlier time, the BIA acknowledged that “landowners” were a PSG. See, e.g., Matter of Acosta, 19 I&N Dec. 211 (BIA 1985).

But, now in intellectually dishonest decisions, the BIA pretzels itself, ignores precedent, and tortures history in scurrilous attempts to deny obvious protection. These bad decisions, anti-asylum bias, and deficient scholarship infect the entire system. 

It makes cases like this — which could  and should have easily been granted in a competent system shortly after the respondent’s arrival in 2016 — hang around for seven years, waste resources, and still be on the docket. 

This is a highly — perhaps intentionally — unrecognized reason why the U.S. asylum asylum system is failing today. It’s also a continuing indictment of the deficient performance of Merrick Garland as Attorney General. 

Obviously, these deadly, festering problems infecting the entire U.S. justice system are NOT going to be solved by taking more extreme enforcement actions against those whose quest for fair and correct asylum determinations are now being systematically stymied and mishandled by the incompetent actions of the USG, starting with the DOJ!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-28-23

  

LA TIMES: SESSIONS PERSECUTES BROWN SKINNED FEMALE REFUGEES — THERE IS NOTHING “EASY” ABOUT BEING AN ABUSED WOMAN OR AN ASYLUM APPLICANT!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7d04de4c-1e76-4711-9b90-dac191234d79

Jazmine Ulloa reports for the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Xiomara started dating him when she was 17. He was different then, not yet the man who pushed drugs and ran with a gang. Not the man who she says berated and raped her, who roused her out of bed some mornings only to beat her.

Not the man who choked her with an electrical cord, or put a gun to her head while she screamed, then begged, “Please, please don’t kill me — I love you.”

Fleeing El Salvador with their daughter, then 4, the 23-year-old mother pleaded for help at a port of entry in El Paso on a chilly day in December 2016.

After nearly two years, her petition for asylum remains caught in a backlog of more than 310,000 other claims. But while she has waited for a ruling, her chance of success has plunged.

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in June issued a decision meant to block most victims of domestic abuse and gang violence from winning asylum, saying that “private criminal acts” generally are not grounds to seek refuge in the U.S. Already, that ruling has narrowed the path for legal refuge for tens of thousands of people attempting to flee strife and poverty in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

“You can tell there is something happening,” said longtime immigration attorney Carlos A. Garcia, who in mid-July spoke to more than 70 women in one cell block at a family detention center in Texas. Most had received denials of their claims that they have what the law deems a “credible fear of persecution.”

“More than I’ve ever seen before,” he said.

In North Carolina, where federal immigration agents sparked criticism last month when they arrested two domestic-violence survivors at a courthouse, some immigration judges are refusing to hear any asylum claims based on allegations of domestic abuse. Other immigration judges are asking for more detailed evidence of abuse at the outset of a case, a problem for victims who often leave their homes with few written records.

Under the Refugee Act of 1980, judges can grant asylum, which allows a person to stay in the U.S. legally, only to people escaping persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in “a particular social group.”

As drug war violence escalated over the last two decades in Mexico and Central America, fueled by a U.S. demand for drugs and waged by gangs partly grown on American streets, human rights lawyers pushed to have victims of domestic violence or gang crime considered part of such a social group when their governments don’t protect them.

After years of argument, they won a major victory in 2014 when the highest U.S. immigration court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, ruled in favor of a woman from Guatemala who fled a husband who had beaten and raped her with impunity.

Sessions, in June, used his legal authority over the immigration system to reverse that decision, deciding a case brought by a woman identified in court as A.B.

“Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems — even all serious problems — that people face every day all over the world,” he said, ruling that in most cases asylum should be limited to those who can show they were directly persecuted by the government, not victims of “private violence.”

Immigration advocates reacted with outrage.

Karen Musalo, a co-counsel for A.B. and a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law, called the decision “a return to the dark ages of refugee law,” a move inconsistent with a steadily evolving principle “that women’s rights are human rights.”

Neither the government, nor the police, could help Xiomara in her rural town, where gangs were deeply embedded.

“Are you kidding?” she said, asking to be identified by only her first name out of concern about possible retaliation. “I would go to the police department and wouldn’t come back alive — if I came back at all.”

Within a year of when they started dating, she said, her boyfriend began drinking and doing drugs, making friends with the wrong crowd. He grew meaner, more violent.

One day he put a gun to her head, her asylum claim says. On another evening, on the roof of his home after another fight, she had been weeping in the dark, when she felt a cord tighten around her neck.

“He would have killed me if his family hadn’t appeared,” she said.

Other women offer similar stories.

Candelaria, 49, who also asked that her last name not be used, said she left an abusive husband of 20 years in Honduras after his drinking became more severe. And always the criminal bands of men roamed.

“My children sent me a photo of me in those days, and I look so old, so sad,” said Candelaria, whose asylum case has been pending for four years.

For more than two decades, United Nations officials and human rights lawyers have argued that women victimized by domestic violence in societies where police refuse to help are being persecuted because of their gender and should be treated as refugees entitled to asylum.

But Sessions and other administration officials have a different view, and they have made a broad effort to curb the path to asylum. The number of people entering the U.S. by claiming asylum has risen sharply in recent years, and administration officials have portrayed the process as a “loophole” in the nation’s immigration laws.

In October, Sessions labeled asylum an “easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States” and called on immigration judges to elevate “the threshold standard of proof in credible fear interviews.” In March, he restricted who could be entitled to full hearings. From May to June, federal officials limited asylum seekers from gaining access through ports of entry, with people waiting for weeks at some of the busiest crossings in Southern California.

The government does not keep precise data on how many domestic-violence survivors claim asylum, but figures released last month give a glimpse of the effect that Sessions’ decision has begun to have at one of the earliest stages of the asylum process.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of 12 parents and children it says were wrongly found not to have a credible fear of return. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Thursday stopped the deportation of a mother and her daughter in the case, threatening to hold Sessions in contempt.

For domestic-abuse survivors waiting for hearings, the uncertainty has been excruciating.

Candelaria wants to go home, but her older children back in Honduras tell her to have hope.

“ ‘You’ve endured enough,’ they tell me,” she said.

Xiomara, now 25, won’t have her asylum hearing for another year.

For months, she scraped by on meager wages, baby-sitting and waiting on tables. She was relieved to find a job at a factory that pays $10 an hour.

The American dream is “one big lie,” she now says.

But at least here, she said, she and her daughter are alive.

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People like Xiomara are wonderful folks, genuine refugees, deserving of protection, who will contribute to our country. As my friend and legal scholar Professor Karen Musalo cogently said, Sessions is leading “a return to the dark ages of refugee law,” a move inconsistent with a steadily evolving principle “that women’s rights are human rights.” But, the “New Due Process Army” (Karen is one of the “Commanding Generals”) isn’t going to let him get away with this outrageous attack on human rights, women’s rights, and human decency.

Due Process Forever, Jeff Sessions Never!

PWS

08-13-18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LA TIMES: MAJORITY OF CALIFORNIANS VALUE MIGRANTS (REGARDLESS OF STATUS) — OPPOSE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?pubid=50435180-e58e-48b5-8e0c-236bf740270e

Jasmine Ulloa reports for the LA Times:

“Despite the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to frame illegal immigration as a threat to public safety, the poll also found an overwhelming majority believe that people without legal residency help revitalize cities as opposed to increasing crime.

The survey results, poll analysts and policy experts said, reflect ongoing trends in California, where through the decades the public has tended to support immigrants in the country illegally, even when federal or state political leaders have stoked anti-immigrant sentiment to rally their bases.

“We have seen this in California forever,” said Jill Darling, the survey director for the Center for Economic and Social Research at USC. “People, including Republicans, have been more supportive of immigrants and reform, even to the point of supporting a path to citizenship, more so than Republican leadership.”

Most poll participants also expressed positive perceptions of people without legal residency in the country.

Nearly 63% of people surveyed said they believed immigrants without legal status strengthened the economy, as opposed to roughly 38% who said they took away jobs. Sixty-six percent said immigrants in the country illegally helped revitalize cities, and about 34% — including more than 72% of Republicans — believed they increased crime.

Policy experts said the poll results reflect the explosive growth of Latinos, Asians and other minority communities that tend to lean Democratic. California’s families are so diverse, they said, that nearly everyone knows someone who came to the country as an immigrant — legally or illegally.

It also reflects a shift away from the “us-versus-them” rhetoric that damaged the Republican brand in the 1990s, political consultants and immigration policy experts said. During that time, Gov. Pete Wilson was criticized for using footage of people running across the border to dramatize the problem of illegal immigration, and voters passed propositions to bar immigrants in the country illegally from public benefits, outlaw affirmative action programs and teach only English in schools.

That “no longer reflects our reality,” said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project. “In a state like California, immigrants are us.”

Andrew Medina, state policy manager for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said he wasn’t surprised by the results of the poll — or by the approval among California residents for the sanctuary state law. A study released in February by the Public Policy Institute of California found that a solid majority of Californians believe the state and local governments should make their own policies and take action to protect the rights of immigrants who are here illegally.

The final language of the sanctuary state law was the result of months of tough negotiations among Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate leader and bill author Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), and law enforcement officials.

It will largely prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies from holding or sharing information about people with federal immigration agents unless those individuals have been convicted of one or more offenses from a list of 800 crimes outlined in a 2013 state law.

Federal immigration authorities still will be able to work with state corrections officials — a key concession Brown had demanded — and will be able to enter county jails to question immigrants. But the state attorney general’s office will be required to publish guidelines and training recommendations to limit immigration agents’ access to personal information.

“It is positive that these polls show that there is support for immigrant communities, and it is especially positive in this era,” Medina said.

Still, Romero advised caution.

“Discrimination against immigrants is very real and a danger,” she said, pointing to anti-immigrant rhetoric at the national level. “I think we can’t rest on a changing landscape in California and just assume that things will continue to be more receptive and open.”

 

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Read the complete article at the link.

The Trump-Sessions-Miller-Bannon bogus White Nationalist program of portraying bigotry and racism as “law enforcement” ultimately will fail. Truth will win out. But, that doesn’t mean that lots of damage won’t be inflicted along the way by restrictionists on vulnerable individuals, their defenders, our society, our economy, and our international leadership and reputation.

Resist the false messages with truth! Support truth with action!

PWS

11-12-17